Muddied Waters: Race, Region, and Local History in Colombia, 1846–1948(Latin America Otherwise)

Colombia’s western Coffee Region is renowned for the whiteness of its inhabitants, who are often described as respectable pioneer families who domesticated a wild frontier and planted coffee on the forested slopes of the Andes. Some local inhabitants, however, tell a different tale-of white migrants rapaciously usurping the lands of indigenous and black communities. Muddied Waters examines both of these legends, showing how local communities, settlers, speculators, and politicians struggled over jurisdictional boundaries and the privatization of communal lands in the creation of the Coffee Region. Viewing the emergence of this region from the perspective of Riosucio, a multiracial town within it, Nancy P. Appelbaum reveals the contingent and contested nature of Colombia’s racialized regional identities.Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Colombian elite intellectuals, Appelbaum contends, mapped race onto their mountainous topography by defining regions in racial terms. They privileged certain places and inhabitants as white and modern and denigrated others as racially inferior and backward. Inhabitants of Riosucio, however, elaborated local narratives about their mestizo and indigenous identities that contested the white mystique of the Coffee Region. Ongoing violent conflicts over land and politics, Appelbaum finds, continue to shape local debates over history and identity. Drawing on archival and published sources complemented by oral history, Muddied Waters vividly illustrates the relationship of mythmaking and racial inequality to regionalism and frontier colonization in postcolonial Latin America.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Riosucio: Race, Colonization, Region, and Community 1 Part I. Country of Regions, 1946–1886 1. Beauty and the Beast: Antioquia and Cauca 31 2. “Accompanied by Progress”: Cauca Intermediaries and Antioqueno Migration 52 3. “By Consent of the Indigenas”: Riosucio’s Indigenous Communities 80 Part 2. The White Republic, 1886–1930 4. Regenerating Riosucio: Regeneration and the Transition to Conservative Rule 107 5. Regenerating Conflict: Riosucio’s Indigenas in the White Republic 124 6. Riosucio on the Margins of the “Model Department” 142 Part 3. Remembering Race, Region, and Community 7. Remembering Riosucio: Imagining a Mestizo Community 167 8. Remembering San Lorenzo: Imagining an Indigenous Community 184 Conclusion: Reimagining Region and Nation 206 Notes 221 Bibliography 267 Index 287

About the Author :
Nancy P. Appelbaum is Assistant Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Review :
"This is microhistory at its best. The story of Riosucio illuminates the multiple and complex ways in which discourses of race, region, and nation inform each other. Muddied Waters not only gives us a new way of thinking about postcolonial Colombia, but also offers rich comparative insights into other Latin American societies where race and place have become historically intertwined." Barbara Weinstein, author of For Social Peace in Brazil: Industrialists and the Remaking of the Working Class in Sao Paulo, 1920-1964 "Muddied Waters is an outstanding contribution to the history of race and colonization in modern Colombia. It invites revision of current interpretations of Colombian and Latin American regionalism." Marcos Palacios, author of Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society